Market This!

by Nathan Hartswick

See those two people on the right over there? We’re both writers.

That’s what makes us good at marketing – not only copywriting and editing, but other things like strategy, communication and branding too. Being a writer means knowing how people tick.

We like this business, but it (like everything else in life) can leave little time for our personal creative writing projects. Recently, we were lamenting how long it’s been since either of us dedicated any significant time to that work. Then, opportunity knocked.

I was asked if I wanted to join a writer’s retreat in Lincoln, Vermont. One where for four days, your only job – from morning to night – was to work on your own creative projects. I roped Amy into it and we signed up together.

What a blast. We had the run of the place, a charming old inn with plenty of nooks to hide out with your laptop. We were welcomed into a wonderful group of artists who knew exactly when to encourage you, when to distract you, and when to leave you alone. We ate meals together, swam in the river, and shared work around a campfire at night. Some people even brought instruments, which provided nice background music while we worked.

After adjusting to the extremely foreign idea that there were truly no other demands on our time, we got in a groove. Amy got a few really sizable sections of her novel done (which is excellent, by the way), and I finished a new children’s play. By Sunday morning, although we missed our kids and our significant others and our pets, everyone had a hard time mustering the desire to return to the real world.

But we had to come back. The best part is, though, we have all returned with a little more spark to make these projects a priority in our lives. And for that (and everything else) our heartfelt thanks go out to Kevin and his remarkable group. We can’t wait to do it again next year.

Or hell, maybe even next month.

Happy Fourth, everyone!

Here’s hoping you “revolutionize” your industry this year. (Hopefully you won’t need muskets & bayonets.)

Click the pic to the left for a fun video, and thanks to Jib Jab for the fun tool.

- A&B

by Nathan Hartswick

“So, I gotta ask. What does it feel like to get tased?”

“Hurts like hell,” the wiry policewoman replied.

I was bartending an awards ceremony for the South Burlington Police Department recently, and took the opportunity to ask a question I’d always wondered about. The woman continued:

“Of course I had to be a big shot. They only require you to get the one-second hit in the training, but I went for the full five.”

“Wow, that’s hardcore.”

When I asked about the scene in The Hangover, she just shook her head at me, muttered, “Yeah, that wouldn’t happen,” and ambled away with her Pepsi, chuckling.

It got me thinking. If something requires a certain amount of pain, why would you ask for five times the amount?

We all do this in our daily lives, I think. I’m sure the policewoman could have justified the five-second hit, saying it somehow made her stronger, wiser, a better cop – but there’s a line between pain that causes growth and pain that just causes – well, pain. Isn’t there?

What about you? In the work you do, do you bring unnecessary pain upon yourself? Ask for more projects than you can handle? Take on more than you need to? Justify it as unavoidable or important?

And, why the hell do we do this, anyway?

Listen, if a tortoise can do it…

We’re all going a million miles an hour these days, and many times our friends, family, clients and partners can get lost in the shuffle.

Take a cue from the tortoise in this video. First, slow down. Then, look around.

Notice somebody struggling.

Finally, give them a hand. (Or a head. Whatever they need.) You’ll both have a better day. We guarantee it.

Back in the day (let’s say 2002-ish), in a moment of desperation, I took a gig writing spam at an extremely sketchy company on Long Island. It was a horrible job, but it paid rent in my dingy basement apartment. (Have I mentioned how much I love Vermont?)

In our department there was this 19-year old kid named Jeff, a graphic designer who would come in, knock out his work in about 10 minutes, and spend the rest of the day swilling Starbucks and messing around with his own projects. He was so young and undervalued that he was the only designer there working on a PC laptop instead of a Mac. He was a glorified intern.

I always liked the guy, probably because he used to laugh at all of my jokes, so I kept in touch with him after I got fired from the spam company. (Yeah, that’s right. I didn’t even have the satisfaction of quitting.) Maybe I can get him a job somewhere, I thought.

How charitable of me, right?

It turns out that, uh, he didn’t really need my help. Jeff soon went freelance and started doing some of the most insane 3D work you’ve ever seen. When I needed a designer on something and called to offer him the project, the answer increasingly became, “Man, I’d like to, but I have this deadline for Mountain Dew…”

The lesson? Just because someone is young, or inexperienced, or seems lazy at work doesn’t [necessarily] mean they’re worthless. Like a prodigy in a classroom full of average kids, Jeff was just bored. Little did the spam company know he was using their time (on the clock, of course) to hone his craft – so he could leave them in the dust later on.

So if Jeff has the time (many times he does not) and you can afford him (I certainly can’t), I encourage you to hire him. As you’ll see by his site and the ridiculous 3D demo reel below, that kid I sat next to turned out to be one helluva designer.

Although he still can’t spell for shit – so I have that on him. And in my book, he’ll always be a snot-nosed little punk.

As we were taking a nice little stroll on the Winooski Riverwalk over the weekend, we passed under a bridge where someone had scrawled graffiti in white spray paint.

We stopped to read it. As you can see by the photo, it said “Big Lots.”

Unless that’s slang for a Winooski-based gang or some fat white Vermonter’s extremely lame rapper name, I assume the artist was referring to the department store.

The words are accompanied by a smiley-face, but it’s hard to know whether this graffiti was intended as praise or derision of the Big Lots brand.

I guess there’s always the chance the phrase was spray-painted there by the marketing department at Big Lots. In which case, nice job, guys: it reminded me I need to pick up some cheap plastic lawn furniture for my porch this summer…